Here’s a bit of good news that got buried in the Rotten Tomatoes quickstep today. A month ago the over/under index for Legend of Tarzan’s opening weekend box office was somewhere in the range of $24-26M, then last week it settled in around $30M with almost all the major prognosticators locking it in at that level. Today, however, Hollywood Reporter reports “more bullish box-office analysts believe it will instead open to $30 million-$35 million domestically and edge out Steven Spielberg’s family entryThe BFG, which is aiming for $30 million.”

Also:

Warners and Village Roadshow are hopeful that the international box office will more than make up for a potentially muted showing in North America. Tarzan launches in 19 markets this weekend, including South Korea and Russia, and it will open in a number of other major markets next week before landing in China on July 19.

Although a quick glance a review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes does not produce a pleasant sensation for LOT stakeholders and enthusiasts, there have been a number of solidly favorable reviews and User Ratings on IMDB are holding at 7.8 average, which is high for a film with a 26% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. There is unlikely to be a major turnaround with critics when the rest of the reviews roll in, but positive word of mouth, strong international results, and a big dropoff for IDR may all play favorably into Legend of Tarzan’s opening.

The truth is — a $40M opening is all it would take for LOT to be on track for profitability under a scenario that would look like this:

$40M Opening Weekend US

$100M US Total

$300M Foreign Total

$400M Global Total

Is such an outcome realistically possible?

As far back as the 1960’s Sy Weintraub’s Tarzan movies were doing 3/4 of their business in foreign markets. John Carter earned $272M, of which 75% was foreign. Thus a 25-75 split between domestic and foreign for Tarzan is completely reasonable.

It all starts with the opening weekend.

There is most assuredly a path for Legend of Tarzan to achieve bo office sucess, and it starts with an opening weekend performance that is only $5M higher than the latest prediction of $35M.

The Tarzan Files and The John Carter Files are independent web resources for history, commentary, and criticism purposes, and are not owned, sponsored by, or affiliated with any third party including Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc, Warner Bros Studios, or DIsney. For a full discussion of the Nominative Fair Use legal framework under which the sites operate, please see the "Legal" page.